Book Review: 'I'll Be Right Here' by Amy Bloom
If John Updike had written openly about queer culture in the suburbs...
In This Matriarchy, There Are No Villains
I’ll Be Right Here is not mainly about sex, but it’s certainly part of its ongoing conversation. This novel is about intimacy, emphatically yes. And it’s undeniably literary fiction to be ranked among the master stylists, many of whom were men during the last century. Updike, Cheever, Bellow, Roth - all of them wrote about upper-middle-class daily life and strife, those stories not set entirely in the suburbs of New York City, but consistently appealing to readers of The New Yorker. Joyce Carol Oates has also written about and spoken to that audience in the same era, and into our own (Amy Bloom has also been published in The New Yorker. Is that evidence of a sensibility? An audience?)
I’ll Be Right Here: A Novel by Amy Bloom (Random House)
This story is a family saga. But in this case the notion of family must be extended to include some principals who are adopted players. It’s no spoiler to disclose that the tale begins at Gazala’s deathbed - in recent time - then flashes back to her girlhood as a poor French-Algerian girl growing up amid the hardships of WWII Vichy Paris.
Even though I’m outlining the relationships among characters here, these plot points aren’t necessarily spoilers. The story is all about the emotional lives of a tightly-knit group of women.
Adopted? You see, Gazala is the grand matriarch of this story, but she’s an adopted member of the Cohen family - adopted, that is, emotionally rather than legally. The Cohen sisters of Poughkeepsie - Alma and Anna - treat Gazala as an honored member after they meet her in the bakery where she works, six months after her arrival in America.
Spanning multiple generations, a family tree might help you keep track. (In any such story, I often feel I need one as first names get strewn about, pages after being introduced.
Alma is sweet and generous. She falls in love with homely Izzy almost at first sight. They plan on having a family, but can’t, then, after some happy years, Izzy dies. Anna, more practical, settles on marrying the mild-mannered WASP Richard, and gives birth to Lily. Anna then forsakes Richard to form an intimate partnership with Honey, who happens to be Richard’s sister. Remarkably, Richard seems understanding.
By her soon departed husband Roy, Lily has a child, Harry, who grows up proudly gay, showbiz inclined, and dresses with appropriate flair. Lily takes up with Bea, who is unrelated to any of them as she comes onstage, having been adopted fondly years back by Gazala and Samir, who had befriended Isabel, their real-estate agent, grandmother of Bea. (Are you writing this down?) Bea was married briefly but quickly decided it was a mistake.
Interwoven with those more contemporary episodes, the WWII backstory describes Gazala’s devotion to her older brother Samir (Sammy). After they’ve been orphaned in Paris, she learns to make her way performing favors for German soldiers. Sammy acquires unspecified talents as a hustler. Gazala learns manners of the aristocratic class after she takes a job as personal assistant to the aged Madame Collette, the famous author.
Gazala is devoted to Sammy as she is to none of her male lovers. They share a bed and fall asleep in one another’s arms. Incest is implied. They will remain this close for the rest of their lives, even after Gazala emigrates to New York, followed by Sammy. There she works in a patisserie, having learned the baker’s trade back in Paris from her father, who worked as assistant to a pastry chef.
After Alma’s Izzy has passed and Anna has taken up with Honey, those three women become a matriarchy with Gazala as their spiritual leader. The second generation, represented by Lily and Bea, will refer to them as “the Greats.”
Unlike melodramas set in similar circumstances, jealousies don’t matter much in the plot. Neither do deaths, which simply occur, and if wrenching, the crises take place off-screen. For the most part, the men in the story - spouses and lovers, at times - aren’t so much stereotypical as they are temporary, therefore unimportant. One man, a young fellow named Jess, a cousin of Bea, is trans, and it’s no secret. He is the father of twins Luke and Lisa. And, oh yes, Lily describes her dalliances in polyamory, which ultimately did not appeal to her, but not for lack of honesty, fairness, and variety.
What persists and endures is the love among these women, old and young. I’m reminded of Anne Tyler’s novels, which some critics have described as “an angel’s eye view.” There are no villians or even meanness in her books - just misunderstood adversaries. And, as in Bloom’s novel, no violence.
Many literary novels seem to be fictionalized memoir, and I’ll Be Right There reads like one. Bloom does name a family in her Acknowledgments who may have been her model for the Greats. However, she cites research sources for French-Algerian history and culture, so perhaps those plot threads aren’t woven from her own background.
I believe the central theme of Bloom’s novel is the power, the coherence, and the sanity of matriarchy. Even if it’s related as fiction, the world of the Greats is a much kinder, gentler place than most of us experience.
But - about those intimate relationships?
It’s an open question whether there have been so many permutations and combinations of coupling (and throupling) in the author’s life - or whether, in describing a better world - she went out of her way to hit all the bases.
Why? In a more perfect world, shouldn’t we all have the right to choose?
Fictionalized memoir? Yes. Not telling which parts I made up!